Tempered glass used as exterior materials for electric/electronic products has low impact strength, has difficulty reducing product weight due to a high specific gravity thereof, and has a problem of high manufacturing costs and high probability of breakage due to poor processability and tractability thereof. In order to address these problems, transparent resins can be used instead of tempered glass.
Examples of transparent resins used in products requiring transparency include polycarbonate resins, transparent acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) resins, styrene-acrylonitrile (SAN) resins, polystyrene resins, and poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) resins. Polycarbonate resins can have good transparency and impact resistance, but can have a problem of high price and insufficient scratch resistance and chemical resistance. Transparent ABS resins such as methylmethacrylate-acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (MABS) resin can have transparency and impact resistance, but can have poor properties in terms of scratch resistance, heat resistance, and the like. Moreover, SAN resins, polystyrene resins, and PMMA resins can be difficult to use as exterior materials due to insufficient impact resistance thereof, despite advantages of low price and high transparency. Moreover, a typical transparent resin can be difficult to apply to exterior materials for electric/electronic products due to low mar resistance thereof and can have a problem of trade-off tendency between scratch resistance and mar resistance.
Therefore, there is a need for a transparent thermoplastic resin composition which has good properties in terms of impact resistance, transparency, scratch resistance, and mar resistance, and thus can be used as exterior materials for electric/electronic products (for example, as a substitute for tempered glass).